I Admire Your Pictures Very Much: A Review of "The Wrestler"

The Wrestler is a heartbreaking film about loneliness and pain. The film’s hero, Randy “The Ram” Robinson, is a tragic hero, overcome by his own desire for escape. From the very beginning, the film tells a predictable story, but it is also an inevitable story, a story that constantly picks up speed as it moves along toward its final frames. The last twenty minutes of the film are staggering in their intensity and sadness.

The character of the Ram is, as he says in his own words, “an old, broken down piece of meat.” In the 1980s, he was an all-star professional wrestler. In the twenty years since, his career has left him damaged. He resorts to working in a supermarket and wrestling in independent wrestling circuits on the weekends to make his money. He has a strained relationship with his daughter, portrayed by Evan Rachel Wood, and, in his spare time, he hangs out at a strip club trying to woo a middle-aged dancer, portrayed by Marisa Tomei.

The film is, first and foremost, a character study. It is about a man who has pushed everything in his life away, a man who has lived his life “burn[ing] the candle at both ends.” The Ram cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality, insisting people refer to him with his stage name even when he is not onstage. He gives up in the face of his problems, succumbs to his demons of violence and drugs. Real life is hard, painful, and sad. It takes work to raise a family, to satisfy a lover, to keep one’s health. The Ram retreats into the fantasy of the ring when faced with the obstacles of life, preferring the cheers of an audience over the love of those that truly care about him.

Mickey Rourke plays the Ram. A washed-up wrestler, the Ram’s life mirrors Rourke’s real life, and Rourke certainly must pull from some very dark demons of his own to achieve his perfect portrayal of the character. It is a performance that, in its understatement and honesty, recalls the best of Brando, the best of DeNiro.

Wood and Tomei also turn in stellar performances, albeit their characters are both a bit underdeveloped, especially in Wood’s case. She only appears in a few scenes for few minutes of the film; however, in her scenes Wood perfectly conveys to the audience the anger and hate and disappointment her character feels toward her father.

Darren Aronofsky is the film’s director. His films are usually dark and full of spectacle, and while The Wrestler is dark thematically, it is anything but spectacular in terms of visuals. Aronofsky employs a minimalistic, handheld approach to the film, giving it all a very stripped down, gritty atmosphere. The camera is often placed behind the Ram. It follows along with him through the ring, the strip club, the supermarket, paving the way for some wonderful tracking shots. The honesty of the camerawork matches the honesty of the actors’ emotions. There are no gimmicks here, no tricks or special effects. It’s all very real, very quick and on-the-spot, the camera responding to the situation as opposed to the situation being controlled by the camera. A feeling of spontaneity exists in the film, as does a feeling of truth.

The film’s writer, Robert Siegel, said in one interview that he is very heavily influenced by films of the 1960s and 1970s, films that feature such isolated characters as Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver and Joe Buck from Midnight Cowboy. The Ram can take his place among such characters, a man who, unable to deal with the complications of life, isolates himself from life. By the end of the film, he invests himself wholly in the fake world of wrestling. He stands in front of his fans, putting on a showman’s façade and asking for their applause. In truth, deep down, he is a man that is hurting and dying, a man that has given up on life.

--Jeff Webb